Johns Hopkins Researchers Identify Key to Tuberculosis Resistance

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

The cascade of events leading to bacterial infection and the immune response is mostly understood. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the immune response to the bacteria that causes tuberculosis have remained a mystery — until now.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have now uncovered how a bacterial molecule controls the body’s response to TB infection and suggest that adjusting the level of this of this molecule may be a new way to treat the disease. The report appears this week as an advance online publication of Nature Medicine.